


What We Leave Behind

by BlondePomeranian



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Adopted Children, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, Family Loss, Loss, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-05-13 18:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian/pseuds/BlondePomeranian
Summary: Post Kirkwall, Hawke and Fenris have fled their lives in the Free Marches, trading certain Kirkwaller persecution for hunting down slavers along the Nevarran roads to Tevinter. When one of their efforts leaves them be-saddled with a orphaned elven boy, they find themselves forced to confront the pasts they had thought they had left behind.





	1. Da'len

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aban_asaara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/gifts).



> [all titles subject to change]
> 
> This started out as a simple prompt request. As it goes. 
> 
> The line chosen was: "I'm not jealous." It began as a cutesy, fluffy (if not overly-indulgent), little idea that then became an excuse to explore a host of things painful and sweet in both their pasts, and then it turned into... well, this.
> 
> You know. As it goes.

“Hawke… No. Do not even think about it,” he said, knowing full well it was already too late.

They’d crossed into Nevarran territory following a lead on a suspected slaver’s route, and before long they stumbled over a well-trodden path from Kirkwall into Wildervale and then, inevitably, into Tevinter. After days of tracking through the plains and woodlands, the caravan they uncovered numbered near the hundreds. They’d had to splinter this caravan, hunting down the larger of the two groups before doubling back to free the rest.

They’d returned to find that in the chaos, many of the would-be slaves in the second group had tried their unshackled hands at escaping into the unforgiving hinterlands. Some found some unexpected aid. Others found bandits.

One such couple struck misfortune with the latter. The bandits left nothing behind but corpses in small clothes for the vultures. But what the corpses left behind…

 “It’s alright,” Hawke spoke softly, as if her the weight of her words could break the air. “We’re not here to hurt you. We want to help you feel safe, I promise.”

Surveying the area to assure they were alone, Fenris set his greatsword against a tree with a defeated sigh, and, against his better judgement, knelt next to Hawke.

Mumbling something under her breath, Hawke paused, then in a voice that mimicked Merrill’s, she cooed, “ _Andaran atish’an_ , uh, _da’len_.”

A dirty, pinched little face peeked out from behind the tree, big eyes in a tiny frame glowering at them from under a messy nest of black hair. “ _Ma tel’sumeil_!”

Hawke glanced to Fenris. “Did you catch that?”

“Why are you asking me?” He deadpanned, “because I have the ears for it?”

“That’s not what I—”

“ _Na, lethallin?_ ” came the small voice again. The boy had stepped out partway from his hiding spot, revealing tattered, dirty rags that hung on his frame like a war-torn banner. His once hard stare had softened, widened, at the sight of Fenris.

For the life of him he wished he didn’t, but somehow Fenris knew that look.

The look that filled to the brim then burst like over-ripe fruit, tears pouring down the boy’s face like nectar over wrinkled skin. A cry that tore what had been held together too long by only eyes pinched shut and hands clapped over the mouth. The abandon in his steps as the boy broke for the first sign of familiarity and safety.

Even so, it nearly knocked the wind out of him when the boy finally crashed into him, a wave of untamed, unbridled, _undeserved_ emotions too large for his small frame to contain.

The boy clung to him, tight as his own armor. There was no place for words in the boy’s wailing sobs; no room for anything but release of that which had been clamped down and wound too tight for far too long.

And Fenris could do nothing but put one arm around the boy, and then, uncertainly, the other, and hold him so that he did not fall completely apart into the dirt.

“Oh, sweet thing…” he heard Hawke exhale, and she ran a comforting hand over the back of the boy’s head.

The boy peeked out, and at the sight of Hawke, let out a howl of a scream and pressed himself deeper into Fenris’ armor. His cries reverberated off the metal in a way that haunted and hurt, and it showed in her eyes as she retracted her hand.

Hawke stood up, clearing her throat to smooth over the cracks that crept into her voice. “Well… I think it would be best if I… gave him some space. I’ll go… take care of _them_ , then.”

Fenris must have given her the look of a dog with its own foot caught in a trap, as she reassured him, “You’re doing fine. Just keep holding him until he calms down. Unfortunately, that’s all you can do in these situations.”

The ending of slavers and the unshackling of their would-be slaves was always the easy part for Fenris. But this? _This_ was Hawke’s area of expertise, not his. This was where he was relieved to have her to bridge the insurmountable gap from freedom to free.

Yet, here he was, with this responsibility quite literally thrown into his hands. Hands that were made to rend a beating, bleeding heart—never to mend it.

So, despite the instincts that told him better to gnaw off his own leg, Fenris did just as Hawke said. He held the boy against the sobs that rocked him like waves, against the screams that tore from his throat like clawing gales, and in spite of how the boy clenched and pounded his fists against the feelings he could not and should not have known.

It was the most frightening storm he’d had to weather. He knew that he was safe, but it was the little boy at the heart of the storm for which he found himself concerned, and even scared.

But like a summer’s squall, its throes were just as wild as they were sudden and suddenly ending, tapering off with the steady beat of soft sobs of exhaustion, punctuated with sniffles like retreating thunder.

Hawke returned then, dirt caked to the end of her staff. He could see the last of the ice she’d formed to make a spade melting from the tip. Fresh soil stained her hands. She leaned against her staff, eyes drifting over the ground between them. “I did for them what I could. Some space in a clearing, picked a few flowers, found a seed for each of them… I don’t know if they were trees, and I don’t know if they will grow, but… the thought was there, at least. I hope it’s enough…” She looked back to where Fenris was with the boy. “How is he?”

“Better,” Fenris said, “or, at least, he is settled somewhat.”

“Enough to where you can carry him?”

“Perhaps,” he answered, aware now of how his legs ached from remaining still for so long.

“I would be more than happy to hold him for you, but…” Hawke let out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t think the feeling would be mutual.”

“I will manage.” He placed one hand on the boy’s back and supported him underneath with his arm, shifting his legs underneath him until he stood with the boy still pressed against him. He felt a murmuring in the back of his mind, like something stirring from a deep slumber. He brushed it away. “There was an alienage not too far back from here. We could make it there within the day.”

She pounded the end of her staff into the ground, ice in her eyes and in her voice. “We are not taking him to an alienage.”

He gave an acknowledging nod and waited. She would know better than he what to do with an orphaned child. But when she did not say a word, he saw what went unspoken between them, and how she held it like parchment over a hungry, grasping pyre.

She made a habit of playing with fire—entertaining her follies and letting her heart speak louder than her mind for longer than was safe. He shook his head, voice low and dowsing. “We can’t keep him.”

Hawke looked away with a huff, indignance rising like a shield.

He could not tell if the weight on his chest came from what he knew took cover behind her shield or from the elven boy curled, sobbing against his armor. Through both, he added quietly, “You _know_ this, Hawke.”

When she met his eyes again, the look was only half as sharp as she perhaps intended. “ _Obviously_. But… doesn’t mean you have to say it.”

Walking off, Hawke grabbed Fenris’ sword from where he left it. She hefted it to fit in the sling where she normally carried her staff. “Then we’ll find a clan to take him in.”

His sword looked out of place slung over her back, but it didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest as she marched on ahead. He began to follow in behind. “We haven’t passed any since the outskirts of Kirkwall.” He paused, finding his footing almost off balance. Smoothing his gait so that he didn’t jostle the boy like a sack of potatoes proved tricky on the forest terrain, but not entirely unnatural. “How do you suppose we’ll find one now?”

And she said, as if it was so simple: “By looking.”

 

Carrying on was not as easy as before. Though, Hawke reminded him many times, the boy was extremely complacent for a toddler—quiet and still as a sack of potatoes, sure, but also just as heavy. He kept having to shift the boy from arm to arm, and each time he did so he felt almost certain that he was going to end up dropping the boy on his head. But each time he found the motion to be as natural as a thought.

One that he brushed aside for now.

They’d tried to coax some words out of the boy as they went. Hawke soon surrendered the task to Fenris, as her words were only met with hiding and whimpers. It didn’t take long to find that the boy knew just about as much Trade as either of them knew Elven, but they were at least able to find a few words or phrases that would elicit a look of comprehension from him.

He even gave the shiest of smiles when he heard Fenris say _Da’len_. So that was how they called him.

Even so, the words of the Elven language felt clunky and out of place in Fenris’ mouth. The syllables sounded thick as dried mud and were just as pliant under his tongue. Though he did not say it aloud, he suspected Da’len found the language of this _lethallin_ less of a warm familiarity, and more of a fascination with his accent, if it could even be called that without offense. He may as well be the cat who barked to the elven boy.

For some of the time, Da’len slept—dirty face nestled on Fenris’ collar bone, unruly black hair brushing against Fenris’ neck with each step. When he did, Hawke allowed herself closer, stealing long, longing looks at the little boy who spurned her.

After a little while, she offered up, “I’m not jealous, or anything.”

Fenris scoffed. His arm hurt, the constant contact made his skin crawl, and the toddler wasn’t exactly fragrant right under his nose. “There is little to envy here, believe me.”

Hawke shook her head. “From this angle he reminds me of little Bethany—only father and I could rock her to sleep after a bad dream.” She reached a hand to stroke his hair, but caught herself and retracted to crossing her arms. “You seem to be handling him fine enough, though.”

“There are… things for which I have plenty of patience.”

“I know… I see it every day. You put up with me.”

That elicited a chuckle from him. “For some things more than others, yes.”

A moment of silence stretched between them. Despite—or perhaps due to—the deadweight in his arms, he still tried to keep a sharp eye out for any threats lurking in the woods around them. He assumed Hawke did the same, until he checked in and saw her eyes no longer resting on Da’len but on the boy and himself. Placid and drifting like a boat on open water, he could not catch her gaze. He felt himself begin to flush. “ _What_?”

She blinked and refocused. “What? Oh. I’m not… Nothing. It’s nothing.”

Da’len shifted and began to stir, rubbing one hand at a puffy eye.

Pulling out her staff, Hawke sighed. “And that’s my cue to go off scouting ahead again… _Please_ tell him I’m not a slaver or anything and that I just want to hug him and squish his little cheeks.”

He smirked, partially in relief that he could now shift the boy to his other side. “I thought you said you weren’t jealous?”

She called back from stomping her way forward, “I’m not! At all! Not even the littlest bit!”

Da’len looked up at him under half-lidded eyes and cheeks that wore an impression of the leather in Fenris’ armor. He asked in a small voice that barely broke above a whisper, “ _Iras mamae la papae, lethallin_?”

Although he could not understand the question, the sounds parsed themselves enough for him to know that he could not give him the answer he wanted. Fenris looked to the trees, remembering the tradition of the vallasdahlen. Even if he had the words to tell a tale he did not know, how much would the boy understand anyway? Would it even be fair to lead him to understand so soon?

Fenris shook his head and gave him the only answer he could: “I’m sorry, _da’len_.”

 And although the little elven boy could not understand the words he used, Fenris’ answer seemed to give Da’len enough peace. He felt Da’len loosen his hold, leaning back to peer up at the trees overhead and the mottled mosaic of green and blue they made with the sky.

All the while, Fenris kept his eyes on the ground, unwilling to see how numerous and tall were the trees in these ancient woods. But he could not stop himself from wondering how many of them grew on buried remains, and what those buried remains had had to leave behind.


	2. Suledin

The sun setting behind the trees cast stripes upon the land. Still without any signs of any Dalish camps nearby, they decided to cut their losses and set up camp for the night. As soon as he could put the boy down, Fenris murmured to him, “Down you go. Time to use your own two feet,” as a way of disguising his relieved sigh. He’d felt as though his skin had been buzzing from the constant contact. Da’len took a few hesitant steps towards the clearing.

“See?” Fenris said, rolling the stiffness from his shoulders and wrists. “He could have walked on his own perfectly fine.”

“You’ve clearly never walked with a toddler before,” Hawke said with a laugh. “It’s less of a stick and more of a nip.”

He gave her a look. “What kind of back-country Fereldanism are you touting now?”

Hawke hesitated. “Uh, less of a shepherd and more the collie at the back?”

“You reek of wet dog.”

“ _Bullocks_ —you don’t _lead_ them so much as chase them around and guide them back on the right path!”

Despite the sunny day behind them, the nights out in the woods and plains leading into Nevarra still had a bite this time of year. Hawke set herself to the task of starting the fire so that once dusk lay its cover, they had both light and warmth at full strength.

Da’len kept within a few feet of Fenris at all times. He followed him back and forth, to and fro from the woods to the clearing as Fenris gathered enough firewood to last through most of the night. After the first trip, Da’len copied him step for step, gathering twigs, ripping up handfuls of grass, and carrying them back to the pile.

After their third trip, Da’len pointed a grass-stained finger at the pile.

“For the _fire_ ,” Fenris replied.

“ _Fye-yehr?_ ”

At this time, Hawke approached and knelt in front of the pile. Da’len scurried back and watched Hawke from between Fenris’ knees. Fenris had to keep himself from flinching away at the contact.

A flame blossomed in Hawke’s hand, one that she set onto the pile of grass, twigs, and firewood. From there it settled and began to grow and swell, fattening itself on the kindling until it was big enough to gnaw at the firewood beneath it.

“Fire,” Fenris repeated.

The boy pointed. “ _Elgara’ras_. _Fire_.”

When it was time to eat, Da’len took all the food they offered him without hesitation. Hawke insisted she be the one to give him the food. “He’s not a mabari,” Fenris countered. “You can’t just give him food to make him like you.”

“He doesn’t have to like me. He just needs to trust me. What if something happens to you before we find a clan?” she replied, fishing out some of her rations. “Besides, it worked for Carver up until a few years ago. Here.” She reached out into the large distance she’d put between them for Da’len’s sake, and handed Fenris a piece of dried meat. Da’len watched, pressing himself closer to Fenris, eyes wide with interest. “Hold it in front of you for a second, consider it, then eat a bite. Then offer him some.”

Fenris did as she instructed, and when he offered the piece to Da’len, the boy stole a glance at Hawke—who pretended to be too busy breaking up more bits of jerkey—then grabbed it from his hand and held it hungrily between his lips.

 The sight gave Hawke a smile, seeing this little toddler act as though he didn’t know how to eat a piece of meat. But Fenris was not surprised to see that behavior. He knew that same rush of excitement of finally having food after too long without, and the inevitable nosedive and crash that followed. Sucking on scraps, nibbling at it fiber by fiber to repress the clawing hunger that never really left… That came from a foresight a child this young should not have had to know. And it was a behavior that was taught, not learned.

“It is fine, Da’len,” he said, knowing the boy would not understand his words. He reached for another piece from Hawke and offered it to him. “You can have some more.”

Ripping up another piece, Hawke added with a smile, “As much as you’d like!”

“As much as won’t make him sick,” Fenris corrected. “If he was with that caravan for as long as I think… Anything more than scraps can cause upset until you’re used to normal meals again.”

Seeing the abundance in Hawke’s hands, Da’len quickly shoved both pieces in his mouth and waited for Fenris to offer him the next piece. This time, instead of handing it to Fenris, however, Hawke held it out to Da’len.

“For you, _Da’len_ ,” she said.

He eyed her wearily, then with a shaky hand took the piece. Like the others, he shoved it in his mouth.

That gave Hawke a laugh. “You’re not even chewing them, silly thing.”

He wasn’t, Fenris knew. Another behavior taught to the children of slaves: stockpile your resources when they are available—they might not be available again for a very long time.

But seeing her smile like that and seeing the little boy who hours ago screamed at the sight of her beginning to open up… Fenris let it go. He did not expect Hawke to understand. Nor did he want her to. These were behaviors that slavery, hunger, and oppression taught, ones that if she could identify them in others, she might begin to see them in him, and he…

That was not who he was, not anymore. He did not want to let that define him any longer.

She did not see him for the scars on his wrists, ankles, and neck. She did not think anything beyond the scars of their battles when she saw the lash marks on his back. She did not know how he had to break and repurpose the pieces of himself day after day—how did the phrase go? In his case, _more_ of a stick and _less_ of a nip—just to see himself in the day’s light, unobscured by the shadow of his past.

 

That night, the sky was clear and still but for the stars twinkling like moonlight on the ocean. The wind was in no hurry to get where it was going, content to mingle with the leaves and whisper to the trees.

They agreed that, while it seemed Da’len no longer feared Hawke upon sight, it would be best that they slept a distance from each other, with Fenris putting himself between the two. They made the boy a bedroll of layered cloaks and clothes meant for winter, but as Fenris _should_ have known and Hawke probably _did_ know but wouldn’t tell, Da’len refused to go to sleep on his own. So Fenris resigned himself to laying next to him like an anchor weight and letting the boy trace his lyrium lines until his little fingers faltered, fell, and stilled under the weight of sleep.

 Fenris slipped away from the boy once he was sure he was sound asleep. He wouldn’t be more than a foot or two from him, but it was as much as he’d gotten for most of the day. His skin still buzzed from the near constant contact and continued to do so for what felt like the next several hours. But when sleep finally took him, he fell under its hold like a ship on the dark and stormy sea…

His dreams were cast in bronze. The burning heat of the sunsets in Tevinter. His sister’s hair in the lowlight of the seamstress’s quarters. A hidden stash of coppers. The back of his mother’s hands and how they looked just the same as his.

And then.

There were shackles made of iron. Gray skies and cold drizzles. Silvers passed between hands. Ornate chalices and dull swords with bent shields. Clammy hands twitching for power.

He could see it happening. Not unto him, but in front of him, before his very eyes, and just out of his reach. The hands he felt were not the ones that held the child at the base of the neck, turned the head this way then that, lifted the arm to caress the rivers of hot, raw power that gushed beneath the skin—

He could hear himself shout out, feel the restraint, see the hand pause.

A response that sounded like the glint of teeth under a smirk.

The hands released the child, who ran from their clutches, a streak of bronze going past him. The hands that once restrained him now pushed him forward, until he felt the ones that held the child clasp his shoulders.

A beard of iron bristles scraped against his neck, and a voice soft and sweet as poisoned honey mead trickled into his ear.

He saw the other slave children lined up in front of him. He must choose.

It would be the wrong choice. They were all the wrong choice. The only right choice he made was shouting the lie that got him here.

He pointed and they ushered the wrong child up onto the pedestal. They bent the child at the knees, yanking the head up to expose the bronze flesh over the throat. The child shook but did not struggle.

They gave him a blade, the wrought-iron handle cold, heavy, and so large in his too small hands. He stared at it and a smudged reflection of green and black stared back.

A word and a nudge like a spark, and his resolve became the hilt inside his grasp.

And when iron met bronze, what spilled out was a powerful, staining, _hungry_ red—

 

Fenris woke, breath rushing out of him in a torrent.

He found Da’len gone.

And heard only the sound of a child screaming.

He leapt to his feet, reaching for his greatsword when… he stilled, and listened closer. Beneath the shrill wailing was a quiet melody, steady and soft.

The fire had burned itself down to blinking embers, leaving much in shadow around him. So he followed the sounds around the embers until he saw a rounded shape in the moonlight. It was one figure entwined with a child’s, the figure cradling and murmuring—or, was that singing?—to the crying child.

Noticing Fenris approach, they shifted a hand out and cast a soft light to illuminate themselves and the space between them. The shadows lifted from them and Hawke gave Fenris a small, sad smile, nodding down at Da’len, sobbing and writhing in her arms.

The light faded and they were shrouded in only moonlight again. Her voice carried over the boy’s cries, but it was softer than he’d ever heard. “The first night always hurts the most.”

Fenris moved closer. “Does he know…?”

He could see her shoulders briefly lift. “I don’t know… Maybe.”

If Da’len knew he was being held in the arms of the human woman who wore his fears on her skin in the daylight, it did not seem to matter now. In the dead of night, she was only what he needed: a warm embrace and a shoulder to cry on.

Old enough to mourn, but too still young to grieve—he knows the hurt, he feels the pain, but he cannot understand why it is there. For Da’len, it is suffering without release. It will lock its claws into his heart and stain him for years, for decades, until he is able to find the key to help him make sense of this piece of his past.

But he must survive his past, first.

“It is strange to think that he may not even remember any of this one day,” Hawke murmured during a moment when Da’len had quelled.

“Probably for the better,” Fenris said.

He could feel her eyes on him, considering him, but all too soon the fright returned to Da’len.

Hawke readjusted, holding him closer even as words they could not understand cut through his wails. “Oh, the hurt is so big and you are so small. I know, I know…”

For a moment, he was almost offended at her words that sounded so patronizing, as if she might be talking to a dog with a splinter. But when he looked at her next…

It was either a trick of the night, or a wrinkle in the Veil, but he saw Hawke, bloodied and weeping, cradling a woman in a white dress—what remained of her mother. He tried to blink the image away, but instead it shifted, seemed to reverse itself. Now Leandra was holding her daughter—another daughter—one Fenris had never known, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

He wanted to look away, but the image contorted in the darkness again, and the rock they were sitting on took the shape of a headstone. Leandra knelt, crumpled in front of it with a younger Hawke behind her, barely older than ten, carrying one twin on her hip and holding the hand of the other.

Fenris blinked, and the images vanished, but what he saw was still the same. Hawke remained, consoling.

When it came to loss, no two victims carried the same scar. Even if the mark on the skin was the same, it could never be the same in how it was worn. Though loss had plunged its blade deep into each of their hearts, what grew from the hole it carved knew none other like it. Fenris kept his pressed between his rib cage and chest plate, leaving it to heal or to fester.

But when loss had plunged its blade into Hawke, she stole the blade from loss and ran, keeping her heart beating, bleeding around its edges. So when she comes across another with a wound in their heart, it is just as real—hot and raw and gushing—to her as it is to them.

And perhaps that was why loss continued to find her, tailing her by the trail of blood she left behind from its blade.

Fenris sat next to her. The moonlight was not enough to discern expression and his tone was not one that would be heard over the child in her arms, so he drew her into him and hoped it was enough.

It was a while again before Da’len’s frights had quieted again, and a little longer still until, exhausted and spent of tears, he seemed to settle into sleep once more.

 Still holding her close, he whispered, “I’m sorry. It… cannot be easy.”

He felt her shake her head against his shoulder. “I’m practiced at it.”

“That’s not… Yes, you know what he’s going through.”

“Oh… that,” Hawke said, as if she didn’t spend her entire life fending off time and time again the same thing that Fenris could not even acknowledge under the dark, quiet cover of night.

A silence stretched between them, and he could feel shame festering in his gut for even bringing it up. The coward, he—

“He reminds me of Carver, after father died,” came Hawke’s voice, small and soft but oh so heavy. “He put on a brave face during the day, did all the things that little boys do—picked fights, ate dirt, and never once cried. But… the night always had a way of unraveling him.”

He hummed in affirmation. “As it does to us all.”

Hawke went on, “Mother just unraveled along with him, which just made things worse. He… it—I was barely ten years old, it _scared_ me. So I went to see the Revered Mother, and she said that this was normal, and _that_ scared me even more.”

Fenris felt himself frowning at this, but listened as she said, “I still remember her explanation for their fright. She said even if you’re lucky enough to not have it follow you into the Fade when you dream, your loss will still wait for you here, for that moment when you’re most blind and vulnerable as you return to consciousness. And,” she stroked the black locks of Da’len’s hair, “it spares no mercy for children.”

A silence grew between them, benign at the start but it soon began to fester. There was so much truth in her words that, if he didn’t know any better, he would think she was lying through her teeth. She described so accurately the sensation of drowning that he did not know how she still breathed. “ _How_ ,” he finally managed, the word choking out of him.

After a pause, she said, “How what?” Innocent as a dove—it nearly made him sick with shame that it came to her so naturally that she did not know how to answer him.

“Every day, you live with it, deal with it, wear it like…” He stopped, and the significance of the bloodswipe he could not see but knew she kept was no longer lost on him—red and bold as it was stained on her skin. Unapologetic and apparent, worn just under her eyes for all to see. Was it ever any wonder, now, that she used its hue for her favor? To mark that which she holds dear?

“ _How_ ,” was all he could say to hope that she understood.

But it was Hawke. She would understand—and understand too well—and so she would do as she always does. “I put on my pants one leg at a time like everyone else.”

“ _Haaawke_ ,” he breathed into her hair, a tired plea for an answer.

“I’m sorry, Fenris. I don’t know. It’s not something you _do_ , it’s just… How do you keep on breathing? It’s like muscle memory or something, at this point.”

“But you had to start somewhere. I don’t even… I can’t…”

Hawke shook her head. “We all start at the same place.” She looked down to Da’len, finally at rest after beginning down his own path—not one he had chosen for himself, but the only one his young mind could follow. “From there you just… I don’t know. Learn how to survive. Keep breathing.”

As if it was so simple.

“I… apologize.” Fenris said, after a long considering pause. “I recognize that your strength does not come without great cost. I would wish upon few others what you’ve had to endure to get it, but… that does not stop me from selfishly yearning to take a piece of it for myself.”

He felt the tension in her relax, like a leak in a dam it began as a trickle and then seemed to release from her all at once as she nestled into him. “Take from me whatever you need. With all that I am, I am yours.”

It wasn’t the first time she had said those words, but they met him at such a time when he least expected them. A time when he didn’t know he was most in need of them, and a time when she seemed least able to give them. Yet, she did—freely and without a moment’s hesitation.

He felt a flame burning just under his eyes, and the tears welling in response as if to dowse it. He hurriedly wiped them—she’d already played consoler to one elven boy who’d come unraveled in the night, she did not need another.

It startled him, then, when he felt a finger on his cheek, clumsy but well intentioned, brushing across the trail of a tear that had escaped his notice. In the next second, instinct already held her wrist in his grasp, awaiting instruction to act.

But instead Fenris let out a shaky breath and gently wrapped her arm around Da’len once more, now enveloping them both. He pulled her closer still, delivering a soft kiss just beside her eye, voice craggy and soft. “The world does not deserve you—nor do I, least of all.”

Someday, with her help, he would shake off his own cowardice enough to find what wound loss had left behind, and what had grown in its place. But for now the sun still slept far beyond the horizon, giving them all their space to unravel the bandages and fumble around, night-blind, with what was still broken. When the daylight would break, they would regather the pieces that had spilled out like an ocean of stars—not yet bound by ropes into constellations, free to burn simply for the sake of burning—and they would dress the wound without looking, and they would carry on.

Morning would come, and with it the reality of what the light is too cruel to hide, but it would not come until they were ready. So long as they each had each other, and Da’len had them both, the night would be as long and as merciful as they commanded.


	3. Lathbora Viran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big huge thanks to @aban-asaara and (tumblr url) CantFaketheCake for helping me through this beast of a chapter. I hope it's well worth the wait!

When the daylight found them, they were already far from where it had left them the evening before.

Though she’d been loath to move, Hawke extricated herself from Da’len’s sleepy hold in the early morning hours and slipped him closer to Fenris. Any progress they’d made—if there was any to be made at all—could be ruined if he woke up in her arms after sleep made muddy his memory of last night.

Sleep held Fenris in a vice grip, and when he woke it took a while for his eyes to adjust and sharpen on the whetstone of morning’s light. In those moments when most of the world seemed bathed in shades of gray, while the lines between the Veil blurred, his eyes caught on the traces of bronze around him—it made up his armor, held Hawke’s together in leather straps, and shone under the dirt on Da’len’s skin. Even once he cleared the sleep from his eyes, the bronze continued to linger on his gaze like whispers in the dark.

It was bittersweet when Da’len woke. Hawke’s comfort in his time of need had seemed a solid rock in a turbulent sea, one that it appeared the waves of sleep could not wash away in a single night. Young as he was, it was a role meant for his parents, but when the cruel light of day revealed Hawke and Fenris shedding his parents’ skins, it startled and confused Da’len into tears once more. This time, however, following Hawke’s example, Fenris was better prepared to handle him.

And this, all just before the sun could climb the peak of the horizon.

They spent the day on foot, clinging to the tapering greenery of the Wildervale on the southern side of the Minanter River. Though more opportunities to choke the slave trade would lie on the Imperial Highway through the Silent Plains, they would have to let them breathe for now, as they figured most Dalish would favor plains and meadows over sand and dunes. It was both clear and strange how smoothly and silently their priorities had shifted in just the course of a single day.

The events of this single day would guide their course for many more to come. Soon they ran out of chubby little fingers on which to count the days, and had to resort to marking the weeks using tiny toes.

The challenge of one day always carried over into the next, along with a few new to keep things interesting. The first few were fraught with sore arms and tired legs, as emaciation clung to Da’len like a leech. He’d become bolder and more insistent that he use his own two feet for walking, never losing that spirit even as his knees scraped the dirt more often than his heels.

“How does the Dalish saying go?” Hawke wondered aloud once as Fenris picked up Da’len, who was still as defiant and gelatinous in his hold as the other two times in the same hour. “‘ _We are the last, and never again shall we submit’_?”

Fenris grunted, collecting a little leg that threatened to go overboard. “Let it never be said that he ever lost the Dalish spirit.”

And though he thought the traditions of the Dalish ridiculous and optimistic at best, Fenris could not help but feel an incredible… _pride_ in the little boy whose spirit would not be broken. He held him a little more tightly each time, both in restraint and admiration. “ _Manaveris anima_ ,” he’d whisper in praise and in prayer.

 

For the first week, sleep was hard-fought and rarely won. The bigger and stronger the boy’s spirit became in the day, the deeper and darker the shadow that awaited him at night. Fenris could see the toll it took on Hawke—the night would linger under her eyes even in the daylight, and she stumbled over some of her quips like her words were mired in a bog. Fenris was not exempt from its effects, either, but he was familiar with navigating its challenges.

One morning, after Hawke stumbled into her first verbal faceplant, she made a sharp notice of his seeming insusceptibility. “Oh, don’t you give me that smug look like it’s just _so easy_.”

“It’s not.” He shook his head, and he could feel himself closing off, not wanting to venture any further than that. Weeks ago, he would have let the door shut without a second thought—she wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t want to know, and he was fine with that. It was what he’d wanted. But now… Part of him wanted more. “But lack of sleep was not… I could not afford any mistakes.”

She was quiet, the edge sloughing off her shoulders and then her voice. “You know that wasn’t your fault,” she said, but it trailed off like a question. “That was done _to_ you, and you are not responsible for its happening.”

That was enough. He let her words in before he shut the door and left them all to mingle. Whatever form of beast they would breed behind the closed door, he would face another time. “ _Mercy_ , Hawke.”

“Of course,” was all she said, and it was over.

 

By the middle of the second week, Da’len played with Hawke’s fingers, with her staff (after she detached the blade), and with the idea that maybe she wasn’t such a bad person after all. He still showed a strong preference for his _lethallin_ , but he also showed an equally strong preference for laughter and silly noises, both of which Hawke had in spades.

“Again, again!” he squealed, one of the words he’d learned to parrot.

“Alright, little one, one more,” Hawke said with a devilish grin. She made a playful show of gnashing her teeth and making chomping, growly noises as she pressed her face against the side of his neck. She took a big breath, but the sound that came out, just as it had twice already, was that of Da’len screaming and squealing and melting into a fit of giggles even after Hawke pulled away.

Finally, Fenris asked, “What are you doing to that poor child?”

Looking away from the giggling little boy in her arms, Hawke’s eyes lit up when she saw the curiosity in Fenris’ face. “Ohhh, oh no, Fenris. _Tell me_ you know what a _raspberry_ is?”

“I… know of a fruit,” he offered. “...I don’t like how you’re looking at me.”

Her devilish grin had returned. She shifted her hold of Da’len, bouncing him a bit as she said, “Oh, Da’len, _Lethallin_   doesn’t know what a _raspberry_ is! We’ll need to teach him, won’t we?”

“Again, again!”

“No, no, all done for now.”

At this, Da’len scowled. “ _No!_ ” His favorite word they’d had the misfortune of teaching him.

But Hawke could be just as patient as she was stubborn. “Yes, Da’len. All done for now.”

“No! Again!”

“No, all done.”

That was another phrase he’d caught onto. Hawke had used it whenever they were finished with their meals, and then expanded it to whenever they’d finished a task, like getting dressed or taking a break from their travels. It seemed quite a rending realization that it could also mean the end of something he did not want to end.

But before he could turn this debate into a battle of wills, Hawke pointed out a large crow roosting on a tree branch. “Look, over there. What is that?”

“ _Assan’an!_ ”

“That’s right, a _bird_ …”

 

There is a form of memory untied from the Fade.

The memory of learning, as with anything else, lives among the spirits, but beyond that, the catalogue of its use is nowhere to be found but just under the skin. It is one that, like a self-weaving tapestry, draws the spirits in droves. The intricacy with which the picture forms—smooth and certain in all its wefts and warps, not a single fray of mistake—signals clear understanding in its creation and a familiarity to the memory that formed it.

But when the picture comes together, the threads wrap around themselves and seal in a singular, endless loop. If there was anything that once bound it to its inspiring memory, it cannot be found within the Fade. It simply _is_ , and is left to the curiosity of the attending spirits, who patiently await its purposeful placement among the other tesserae in the mosaic.

Where fear once colored all of Da’len’s gaze, it was now only a piece of the mosaic. What shone brighter—curiosity, determination, even a bit of mischief—turned the fear into a harmless mote, like a freckle that comes with age. In fact, after they’d managed to work away at much of the dirt that once covered him, they found a few freckles along his cheeks. This boy was so resilient that even the specks of dirt on his cheeks would not submit, they’d joked.

It seemed, too, that when he came to them covered in dirt it was not so much of a byproduct of his situation but more a byproduct of, well, being a little boy.

Some days, Fenris would indulge this boyish fascination. Partially to nettle under Hawke’s skin: mud and leaves made great camouflage for siccing a little swamp monster on a freshly bathed Hawke. He also partook for reasons that didn’t come pre-packaged in words: the squish and wet slop of sun-warmed mud between his fingers, the innocence of seeing his own hands coated in something other than blood, and the dissonance of disgust and pride in their melting mud piles that looked… exactly as one might imagine. All this brought him a far-flung echo of delight, only amplified by the squeals of laughter ringing from Da’len when he would push out an air bubble trapped beneath the mud that sounded… also exactly as one might imagine.

But today they had taken a break from playing swamp monster—Hawke had threatened to retaliate with a raspberry monster for them both, and as Fenris had found out, he much preferred the fruit to Hawke’s rendition. Instead, he took Da’len to a nearby stream. When Hawke asked, he told her he would attempt to bathe him while he let him splash around. What he didn’t tell Hawke was the truth: that it was a compromise. Like a piglet bereft of mud, Da’len got rather cranky if he went too long without splashing or stomping in anything that squelched. And Da’len, what Fenris did not tell _him_ was that, this time, no matter how much he jumped and splashed, it would not make him any the dirtier.

Fenris let himself wear a proud smirk as they walked off—the man swinging the biggest sword was not often the one sought out for political guidance. Pity, they’d been missing out all these years on his genius.

Though more silt and sand than Fenris had hoped for, the stream still delighted Da’len nonetheless. The little boy found a particular joy in picking out the rocks from under the silt and throwing them back into the water with a loud splash and a mighty roar. However, that was only after Fenris had had to fish the rocks out of Da’len’s mouth and acquiesce to showing him this activity instead. He fully anticipated getting pegged by a pebble or two, and had already planned the next activity for when Da’len inevitably would nail himself with a rock and need a distraction.

All this, while hunched barefoot in the stream cupping water in his hands and dumping it over the naked little boy. He might as well have tried to throw water over a greased nug.

“Look at you,” came Hawke’s voice over his shoulder. “You’re a natural.”

“I’m getting repeatedly pelted with rocks and the muddy stream water that I’m dumping on this naked feral child and calling it a bath.” He deadpanned, “I don’t know how much more _natural_ I can get.”

Removing her boots and socks, she said, “Look at it this way: he’s neither crying nor dead. You must be doing something right.”

Another roar, and a splash soon followed. Fenris threw his arm up for cover, lowering it when Da’len turned around, hands outstretched towards him. “You want more rocks? You had plenty. What did you do with all of them?”

Da’len’s little features slowly scrunched together in thought.

Fenris waved him forward. “Where did they go? Go find them.”

Da’len turned and toddled ahead a few steps, shoving his hands into the stream in search of more rocks. It only took Fenris one step to catch up behind him and continue scrubbing at the little boy’s bare back.

Hawke stepped into the water next to him. “See? A natural.”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t say natural, but… it’s not…”

She knelt down with them, pretending to join Da’len in his search for rocks while feeding some magic into the water to cleanse it. “What do you mean?”

Fenris paused, then frowned. He couldn’t find the words to describe something both familiar and unfamiliar as this: the ritual, the closeness, the bronze sheen of water on their skin… “No, forget it. Hawke, does it concern you that we’ve not seen hide nor hair of any clans in over two weeks?”

She scoffed, handing Da’len a rock. “No, why would it? Are you worried they all simultaneously absconded into the Fade?”

“Not what I—”

“Perhaps we smell bad,” Hawke interjected, watching as Da’len had set his sights on a rather large stone lodged in the stream floor. He dropped the rock from Hawke and set to grabbing at its edges with his chubby little fingers, lips pursed in concentration.

A bemused snort escaped him. “There is no _perhaps_ about that.” He put his hands out to catch Da’len as he stumbled back. The little boy righted himself and, with Dalish persistence, returned to his task. Fenris shook his head. “No, what I meant was concern for what’s happening here.”

Between the mud on his fingers and the slippery moss on the stone, Da’len slipped and splashed in the water before finally managing to wriggle the stone free. The little boy was in marvel of his accomplishment. Though Fenris or Hawke could have held it in one hand, to Da’len the face of the stone was just as large as his own. It was perhaps the biggest prize he’d unearthed with his own two hands. A gleeful realization sparkled in his eyes like sunlight on the water.

Fenris added, “You said _natural_ , and—oh, watch out.”

Da’len let out a deep, rumbling roar befitting a dwarven war cry. He raised the stone over his head and threw it down with enough force to make him stumble back. The stone crashed into the stream with a shattering sound and a splash nearly half the boy’s height. Da’len—covered head to toe, front to back in water—cackled in delight.

Hawke put an arm out to catch the boy before he could run up and do it again. Her joking tone had fallen like the stone as she said, first to Da’len, “ _All done, Da’len_ ,” then, “What are you getting at, Fenris?”

He blinked, taking the time to wipe some of the water from his face as he tried to read her sudden change. He answered slowly, choosing his words with care. “I’m not getting at anything. I’ve just noticed how we’ve both… adapted.”

“Stop beating around the bush and spit it out.”

Fenris paused. Speaking plainly would bring their conversation to a head, maybe revealing the reason for her sudden hostility. But, more than likely, it was the same reason he’d preferred to euphemize in the first place. He felt his guard rising in his voice, as he spoke. “As you wish… I’m concerned that we’re becoming too—” No, backtrack; he wouldn’t bring himself to say it, even now. “That this is too easily becoming the new normal.”

He had struck the beast in the eye, it seemed. “This isn’t the new _normal_ , Fenris. Nothing about—about _this_ can ever be normal,” she said, almost spitting. Standing up, she added, “It’s our chosen responsibility to care for him until we find his new family. Elsewhere. That’s it.”

Leaving Da’len to pursue the stone again, Fenris stood up to face her. “I wasn’t insinuating—Hawke? Where are you going?”

“Drop it, Fenris. _Mercy_.”

He watched her leave, her name like an olive branch caught in his throat.

Moments later, a familiar roar and subsequent splash brought his attention back to the naked little boy stomping around in the stream.

“ _MURSSEE!_ ” bellowed Da’len at the stone.

With a frustrated sigh, Fenris turned back to Da’len. “Agreed. You’re probably clean as you’ll ever be.” He picked the boy up and made their way back to the bank. “All done. Let’s get you dressed…”

And, as ever, Da’len thrashed and squirmed against him. “No! _No!_ No all done!” And when those words did not work, Da’len tried, “No! _Murssee!_ ”

“No mercy?” Fenris repeated flatly, readying himself for the uphill battle ahead. “You have no idea.”

 

They spent the rest of the day on foot. Whatever had gotten under Hawke’s skin had burrowed itself deep and slept, not forgotten entirely. She often spoke with a tired, sheepish softness that, Fenris knew, usually heralded an apology and explanation on the horizon. Far from the first time they had sparked crossfire between them, he need only wait and be patient. When she was ready, she would return to him to dowse the embers and bridge the gap between them. He could afford her the day or two to simmer. Paltry, really, compared to the years she had patiently afforded him.

And so they made conversation of other things, indulged Da’len in swinging him as they walked, pretending to drop him in bushes as they carried him, and in unspoken agreement enjoyed the time spent forgetting to keep their guard up. They traveled at a meandering pace and let the plains swallow Da’len’s rambunctious screams and wailing cries alike. They spent the time living, by all accounts except in name, _normally_.

How foreign the concept to the unfeeling mind, but oh, how familiar the feeling to the unthinking heart.

And that night, those moments in time still lingered with him as he fell asleep, weaving themselves so tightly around and strangling out his other thoughts. The moments wove themselves into a memory, following him into his dreams, whereupon the spirits of the Fade, ravenously curious as they were, fell upon it like rain. But the threads would not be forced apart, and so the spirits rose under it like fire, then wind, then force. Finally, they took the moments in their hands and stretched, tugged, and examined with all their capacities for seams, trying to make sense of it, searching for the thread that bound it to familiarity. When the thread would not be found, they simply let memory alone, to replay, coiling around itself and refracting through the wrinkles. In white light, in green, in blue, until swirling, folding over itself until it seemed to settle, showing the figures in motion—the older caring delicately for the younger—captured in warm, bright bronze.

The last light glowing like an ember in the void, the memory of the moments seemed to blink, sigh, and lead him into a deep and dreamless sleep, uninterrupted and steady.

 

The next day seemed a hangover from the last. Where yesterday had seen to clearing the water, there was now a drop of worry that began to spread inside them both, as they seemed no closer to finding a Dalish camp than they had been in the previous days—now adding up to two and a half weeks. At least their luck seemed to hold consistent in the other direction, too—though they caught sounds in the night and saw shadows that darted just out of their periphery, they never came to fruition. Wind and wildlife, perhaps, but no bandits, slavers, or templars to speak of.

The closer they traveled to the Imperial Highway, the greater that risk would become. They knew, however, the Fields of Ghislain that lay on the western side of the highway seemed a likely place to find a Dalish clan. They would have to keep their wits about them.

Fenris would have little trouble with that. The instinct of vigilance never left him, nor was he particularly taken by the views anymore. Grassy meadows, clusters of trees, craggy and creeping hinterlands, and plains and plains and plains… All so different and yet the same as the last several hours of travel. What he wouldn’t give for a city, a village, or even just an abandoned cabin where they could take shelter from the elements for a night…

Hawke echoed his sentiments there. Prior to her seven years in Kirkwall, her experience on the road had been confined to outrunning the Blight and the tragedies that came with it. For the first few days she had seemed content to stay on the road, on the outskirts of towns, villages, and more people that would somehow seek her out for help. (Fenris knew that it was never the people who found her, but she who always beelined to anyone who needed help the most. She never complained about helping them, but was never shy about ranting to him afterwards, as if they’d tied her hands behind her back and personally shoved her into the pit of their problems. Smarter than to point out her proficiency with the handcuff knot and penchant for cliff diving, he just listened and nodded along.)

The closest thing to civilization they encountered was a traveling merchant they happened upon. They’d given each other both quite a startle, further confirming that they would likely not encounter anything else—let alone a Dalish clan—for longer still.

Amiable and soft-spoken as the merchant was, he was still human, and so Da’len could not be persuaded near him. Fenris hung back with the boy at a distance while Hawke made small talk and bartered for what they needed. Far enough away with plenty of brush between them, Da’len did not cry nor was he easily susceptible to it as he’d been with Hawke for the first week, but even so, fear darkened his eyes and he looked nothing like the inquisitive, bold little boy he’d shown them.

As Hawke carried on with the merchant, Da’len would dart between holding onto Fenris’ leg and pressing himself up to the brush, little eyebrows furrowed and pursed lips wobbly with indecision. He only cried out once when the merchant suddenly bowed forward in laughter. When Hawke returned, Da’len leapt to her side and would not let go, little cries bubbling and bursting with words they could not understand but whose meaning they could describe as _do not do that again_.

Hawke reassured him, then spoke excitedly about the clothing she’d picked up and the possibilities for repurposing. “I chose this nice green for him, not that there were many other options.”

“Great,” Fenris deadpanned, “Now we can lose him in the tall grass _and_ the bushes.”

Hawke ignored him. “And it’ll go well with this gold thread I’ve been saving. Pity I can only sew things together and do a crude imitation of the Amell crest. He’d look quite dashing with a little flourish in the stitching.”

They paused there for the afternoon, intent to get the boy properly outfitted. Their daggers made for poorly cut lines, but the tunic was so large and Da’len was so small that it hardly mattered. Fenris tasked himself with something resembling pants while Hawke configured a little shirt out of what was left. Da’len, meanwhile, busied himself with the very important job of emptying out the contents of their rucksacks in between wailing loud enough to make a despair demon blush whenever they had to take a measurement.

All the while, Hawke spoke fondly to him and handled his antics with a patient firmness befitting of a parent. It was not unexpected but Fenris still found it all the more puzzling, given her reaction earlier.

As they watched Da’len strew what were no doubt Hawke’s smallclothes through the field, Fenris set down the partially-formed pants and needle, rolling his wrists and flexing his fingers. “I take back what I said. Even with a full night’s rest on a proper bed, I do not think I could keep up with him.”

Hawke scoffed, a smug look on her face. She set down her little shirt-in-the-making, stretching her arms over her head. “ _Oh_ , the things I would do for a hot bath and a decent bed,” she bemoaned, pressing her fingers into the small of her back. “I’d even give you a demonstration, but that would probably go against the spirit of good parenting.”

For all the same reasons, Fenris agreed. After having a decent bed to finally call his own in Kirkwall, he could have gone without returning to soft ground and thin bedrolls. He often woke with a headache and his shoulders were sore almost constantly, not at all helped by the discovery that Da’len would happily sit on them rather than be held when his little legs grew too tired to walk.

And in addition to that, he now had another curiosity swimming in the back of his mind. Leave it to Hawke to drop a fish in the well and run.

 

The night came very late, and Da’len had taken a while to settle in and fall asleep. When he finally went down—swinging, no less—Fenris pulled from his pack a bottle of Tevinter wine they’d picked from the first splintered group of slavers they’d caught before doubling back to where they’d found Da’len. Hawke had jabbed at him about his priorities at the time, but the way her eyes lit up when he offered it was all the apology he needed.

After a few quiet minutes of passing the bottle between them, their tongues began to loosen.

“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about,” Fenris finally said in a low tone. “The first night.”

Hawke wiped her lips, the dark red wine staining the back of her hand. “The first night?”

“With Da’len. About how he may not even remember this…” Fenris stole a glance at the boy sleeping soundly between them. “I had said that it was probably for the better if he didn’t. I had thought that it would be easier for him that way.”

“Oh? And do you still think that?” she asked, passing the bottle.

He took it from her, absently swirling it. “I do.” He took a drink—gritty and harsh. A true decanter would make a world of a difference, but it made do for sitting by the fire. “Don’t you?”

Hawke hesitated, then drawled out, “It… depends.”

The decanter would take the edge off the dry bitterness. Pity there was no decanter for _him_. “What would you want him to remember? What good would that do?”

“What _good_ would it do?” she repeated. She shook her head and reached for the bottle. “Give me that. The memories are all you have of someone once they’re gone. It’s too cruel to take that, too.”

He handed her the bottle. “Is it, though? _Na beatituda hoc munda sit ignorantia_. The only bliss in this world stems from ignorance.”

Even in the low light, he could see her formulating a snarky response as she lowered the bottle from her re-crimsoned lips. “You know we have that saying, too, but it takes ten minutes less to say: Ignorance is bliss.”

“Well.” A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, and, leaning back, he let it twist his words. “ _Vishante lingua kaffas_.”

Her blue eyes bore into him, as if trying to pry the meaning from his expression. “Hmm, there’s a bad word in there, isn’t there?”

“Well done,” he said. “ _Sometimes your language tastes like shit on my tongue_.”

“All that in three words?”

He shrugged. “Ignorance is bliss.”

“Well… for all your talk,” she paused, swirling the bottle for effect. “…Sometimes your Tevinter wine isn’t much better.”

He scoffed, leaning forward to reach for the bottle. “Please. All that Freemarcher piss-ale has whipped your nerves into calling a Moscato full-bodied. Plus,” he added, tipping the neck of the bottle her way, “it lacks proper decanting.”

“Oh, _sorry_ , sometimes I forget that _Oi’m Fereldan_ and can’t tell a rock from a potato without breaking a tooth,” Hawke drawled, her normally clear-as-a-crystal-bell voice taking on a screechy, hyperbolic accent. “Oi’ll bey-uh that in moind next time Oi pahtake in yah fancy graipe juice, m’Lohrd.”

Fenris let out a laugh. “I feel as though I’m threatened to be swallowed by a musty bog. Please never do that again.”

Hawke sighed, a pout on her lips. “And here I thought you loved me for who I am.”

“And I still do… unfortunate as it would seem.”

Hawke smiled, a soft thing made softer by the wine and the firelight. They both settled into a comfortable silence that grew steadily colder as they rested their eyes on the boy sleeping between them and the reality of their situation.

This time, Hawke spoke first.

“I think he deserves to remember some things. I wouldn’t want him to remember any of the bad things that have happened to him, of course, but... Maybe… his parents’ faces, their voices, maybe even their names if he has the capacity, I don’t know…” Her voice faded out, her attention enveloped on Da’len’s curled up form in the firelight. Fenris followed her, watching as she brushed a strand of curly black hair from his face. “Whatever good things are worth remembering.”

Fenris’ gaze lingered on Da’len for moments longer. He took in the curve of the boy’s cheeks--a roundness they’d been working to recover after they’d found him so gaunt. He noticed the softness around his face, lines of worry, anger, sorrow, or grief had yet to leave their etching. And he committed to safe keeping the peaceful look of the little boy deep in quiet, dreaming sleep, safe from the memories that haunted him.

His own memories of his life before were filled with warmth--what had returned, anyway, knew nothing but nostalgic wonder and familial bonds. Once illuminated, he pursued them like candles in the dark, yearning to recapture everything they’d carried. Held just out of reach, their tantalizing brightness blinded him and the ghost of their warmth only reminded him how cold he was now. And, even when he had held the melting wax in his palm, the light had only revealed the demons that since gathered in the shadows around it. Seven years waiting, seven years hungry.

A question, like heartburn, rose in his throat, and Fenris felt himself stiffen, flicking his gaze over to Hawke. This hit too close to home, but he kept himself from walling it off just yet.The words flowed easily, but the right tone would not temper, and so it came out with an edge, harsher than he intended: “What would you say makes it a good thing to remember? Just because a memory is good doesn’t mean it will _do_ good for him to remember it.”

Hawke leaned forward, elbows propped on her knees, chin held in her hands, fingers covering her mouth. She closed her eyes, exhaled. When she opened her eyes again, her voice was faint and new as sunrise. “So, about yesterday…”

“Yesterday?”

“When I had to yield.”

“Oh.” Fenris shifted back. He forced the tension in his shoulders to relax and cleared his throat to swallow the edge in his voice. Meeting an opening door with a brandished blade would get them nowhere. “That.”

He had seen Hawke wring her hands so few times that he thought she was preparing a spell for a moment before she said, “Bear with me.”

“Always.”

It was a while before Hawke spoke again, and her voice was uncharacteristically uncertain, like tip-toeing footsteps on the first ice on the lake. “When we lived all together in Lothering—before the Blight and everything it brought with it—life was… well, it wasn’t perfect, but at the time it didn’t need to be anything else.”

A soft smile seemed to bloom on her face and she stared off into a distant world that did not exist—at least, not any longer. “It was… idyllic, peaceful and certain. In many ways, unlike anything I’ve experienced since, except for moments that feel…” Her smile just as soon began to wilt, a seed of worry pressed now between her lips. “Not wrong, but like they don’t belong here.”

Fenris leaned forward, tilting his head.

“Knowing what I know now, how it all… ended, I can’t...” She let loose a shaky breath, eyes downcast, letting the words escape her.

“It becomes impossible to separate one from the other,” Fenris filled in.

“Yes,” she answered breathlessly, blue eyes misted over, her gaze anywhere but in this world. She seemed to disappear in it, narrating from afar, “There was conflict and stress and badness, sure, but the thing I remember most was just that security in what I would return to at the end of the day. Even when me and the twins would fight, childishly vicious as it gets, we still knew that when it came down to it, we would always be there for each other against the world and whatever it could throw at us.

“Bethany used to complain our life in Lothering was boring and bland as bread. But bread feeds, doesn’t it? Monotony was the bread on which we spread our fantasies, and we learned to harvest spices and seeds and knead them into the dough. If you knew where to look and how to dream, you’d be hard-pressed to be sick of it. That’s what mother used to say. I never believed her until…”

Hawke blinked, and in that moment it was as if she’d returned. Her expression fell, she seemed entirely deflated, even as she took in stuttered, shallow breaths. Fenris crossed the distance between them, sitting next to her and pulling her close to him. She leaned into him but kept herself steady and almost rigid.

“I know it is not easy to revisit old memories,” Fenris said.

He felt her shake her head. She spoke slowly, keeping her voice steady. “Revisiting isn’t what bothers me. I revisit it every day. But that’s just it— _visiting_ , a temporary thing that you can control and escape from. Living it, again, would be… far different, knowing how it ended last time.”

“You don’t think it could turn out any differently?”

“You know… Living in Lothering for all those years wasn’t much unlike living in Kirkwall, actually. You get to know people, build relationships, and get accustomed to having constants. You could go to sleep one night and be confident that you’d wake up to find that everything you knew would still be there, more or less the same.” She took in a breath, paused, then exhaled the loss. “I _know_ that it could. But in every case that I’ve let myself think that maybe this, _this_ time it could be different, it has _not_. I want it to so badly, so I revisit the memories, where I can separate the good from the bad. That’s safe.”

“For some. But at a cost.”

She nodded. “It’s… you want to feel happy, you know you do, but... just as you start to let yourself relax—”

“—it comes over you like a cloud,” his voice carried on, lending a sharp, punctual form to her thoughts, “and you remember how it’s only there to be taken from you. But they cannot take what you do not own, so you avoid it at all costs.”

“And just like that, the thing you want the most becomes a poison,” Hawke finished, any steadiness gone from her voice. “So, when you pointed out how _normal_ and _natural_ things were becoming with Da’len, I… I panicked. Because on the other side of normal and natural is…”

“I know.” He held her tighter, and this time she did not resist. “I know.”

She embraced him back, taking the strength from him enough to draw out the heart of the matter: “I can’t go through this again, Fenris. I can’t.”

“I know,” was all he could say. And it was the truth.

Hiding her face against his neck, she trembled and let out one rattled breath after another. Caught somewhere between a sob and a sigh, he could feel her building herself back up again, a wall coming up between them.

Was this what it felt like to be on the other side? Hawke had always been so open and vulnerable with him that a wall between them on her side felt… out of place. She’d always used her stones to break down the walls of others, never using them to build a wall of her own. And, after being so close to her for so long, that she held back now… it was a hurt that needed acknowledgement, selfish as it was.

“ _Marian_ .” Her name spoken in a whisper, a secret they kept guarded like Andrastians kept the Sacred Ashes. It was just as powerful and the same—the remnants of someone that once was, burned long, long ago. Not a phoenix but a _Hawke_ that rose from them; wings singed brown from dowsed flames spread elsewhere, white at its breast from where the fire seared it clean as bone. She was _Hawke_ , by convenience and preference; but she was _Marian_ first, now only by incantation and prayer.

“I’m so sorry,” he finally said. “I did not mean to put you in this position. You have shown him so much love, I only thought—”

She looked up at him, a last glance behind the wall as the stones continued to pile. “And I will continue to _give_ him all the love that he deserves, but I cannot have it _taken_ from me and thrown into the dirt again. I can’t.”

The stones piled higher. She looked away, down again, gone.

It was another moment before she frowned, saying, “But you… are you really considering it?”

“I _was_ ,” he corrected her, too quickly. “It…” he trailed off, then sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Stupid, for speaking so quickly; selfish for wanting to bring it up in the first place, after she’d already made it clear.

 _It feels like there is something there,_ he wanted to say, _something that I can feel just out of reach._ Something so warm that it might be worth risking the burn of holding it in his hand.

“What is it?” Hawke asked, her voice small and sincere in its weakness.

“I don’t know,” he said, not a lie but not the truth either.

Hawke pulled herself back, brushing away the hair that stuck to her cheeks. “Fenris, I’ve seen how you interact with him. There’s… something there, isn’t there?”

He couldn’t help but let out an amused huff. No use in hiding it if she already knew as much as him. He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s something that I’ve known but cannot recall. Something else that, for the first time since meeting you, might be worth reclaiming.”

Fenris could hear it in the way she took a deep breath, feel it in the way she pulled away from him and sat up straight, see it in the way she pursed her lips together and blinked just as tightly. This bleeding-heart of a woman would sooner throw herself off a cliff than leave loose ends untied. And so he spoke before she could, voice firm, “But it is no matter anymore. I do not want to put you through what you said yourself you cannot handle.”

Hawke snorted, louder than usual. Even crossing her arms over her chest still didn’t hide the edge in her voice. “When has that stopped me from doing the same thing to you?”

“You haven’t. I told you, Hawke, _I_ made the choice to walk by your side into whatever future there may be. I did so as a free man then, and continue to do so now.”

“But that’s just it! You--” She pressed her lips together, eyes wide as she glanced over to Da’len. After a few seconds of sheepish silence, she looked back to Fenris, voice considerably quieter, “You say you _can’t_ and then you do it anyway because… because you believe there’s something at the end of it that’s better than what you have to go through to get it. You… you’ve escaped slavery, learned to read and write, defied and defended yourself against Danarius, and learned to live and think and speak and _love_ as a free man does.”

Fenris looked away, unsure which he disliked more, her truth or the one behind it:  “Only because I had people like you to push me through it.”

“Yes,” she said, grabbing his hands and pulling his gaze back. “Just like I have you to help me through this.”

“Hawke—”

“Fenris. If it means this much to you, then I… I’m not going to hold you back.” She squeezed his hands, pulling herself closer. “I know those were your words, but I’m walking by your side just as much as you’re walking by mine. That’s how this works.”

The fire beside them had dimmed. Its heat was too weak and he had drank too little to blame either for the flush on his cheeks. “I am not saying we’re keeping him. Only that… perhaps we will need to consider what will happen if we cannot find a clan to take him.”

Blue eyes brighter than the light beside them and bloodswipe burning red across her face, the smile on her lips was warm, once crimson, now cast in bronze. “It won’t be easy. I know this, you know this. There will be times when I might not be able to separate the good from the bad, but… for you?” She let go of one hand and picked up the bottle of wine, raising it between them. “For you? I’ll see to the bottom of this beautifully labeled but terrible-tasting bottle of wine.”

Turning her head to the side, she tipped the bottle as she’d down a shot, taking a big swallow and slamming it down with just the same look on her face. “Cheers?” she coughed out around the dregs, handing him the bottle. “To, ah, the new beginnings we’re given?”

With a smile that warmed him far more than the fire or wine ever could, Fenris reached for the bottle, but not before taking her hand in his. The back of her hand smooth and cool under his palm, he stopped to warm her hand--cherishing how her knuckles fit so perfectly between the bases of his fingers--until the two melded, seamlessly, into one. And, rather than let go, he took the bottle in his other hand and lifted it between them. “Cheers, then,” he said, feeling her hand shift and fingers intertwine between his. Eyes held on each other in the moment, they let their gazes slip, then rest on the little boy asleep between them. “To the new beginnings we’re given, and to reclaiming what our pasts have taken.”

 

* * *

 

It is a sickness, this hate.

Yet, its antithesis meets him in much the same way. It shackles him, attaches itself to him, forces his hand, demands to be felt with his everything or nothing at all. An all-consuming pyre that purges him clean of anything else.

It is a tyrant, this…

It holds his gaze and will not yield. He cannot look away from what it sees; it is hands that will never stop reaching for the sun, unaware of how badly it burns. And what he sees is burned into his mind’s eye, and it will burn him, blind him if he cannot look away.

It is a blindness, this…

Unrelenting, it bends his will, snapping suppositions it does not like like twigs between its teeth. It feeds him ideas that go down smooth as truth but whose aftertaste bites just as the next hit finds his tongue. And as he chokes, it bids him say its name. Take it into his mouth, accept it as he has done before.

It is an agony, this—

He cannot. Will not. Saying it makes it real, and it will ruin him if he lets it.

But he will not fight against the hold it has on his gaze. He would be content to let this image burn into every corner of his mind for so long as he can have it. He will let it be known in every way but by name.

She is curled around him so completely. There is not a part of Da’len that Hawke does not shield in some way, holding him close, tight as a compress to the wound that has never stopped bleeding. They sleep, and if anything has followed them into their dreams, it is warmth, it is wonder, it is the willingness to trust again.

It is everything Fenris has fought for, and in this moment, it is _his_.

This realization overfills his heart, painfully swollen at the seams, and when it bursts, he is flooded. Memories, unbidden, rise to the surface, as if they’ve been there all his life just waiting for something to loosen its hold. They appear but do not clamor for his attention, merely adding to what he already knows like an afterthought.

Seeing them huddled together, one curled around the other, he knows now why it fills him so painfully. The firelight casts them in bronze and they are a familiar sight, the mother and child. Mother and Varania, close as they were deep in the slaver’s hands. This, he remembers now, was one of the moments that steeled his resolve, that solidified his choice to fight, to be the champion they _needed_.

Yet now his resolve is flimsy as flower petals. This is what he gave up, what he once willfully abandoned in favor of becoming Danarius’ personal _pet_ —and what became of that? His mother had died no better than she had lived, and the very sister he’d sold himself to free from slavery tried to sell him right back into it at the first chance she got. She had said that freedom was no boon, that the breaking of her shackles had broken her from the only thing she’d known.

His gaze focuses on Da’len. What would happen if he gave this up, too?

What if, instead, they just… keep going?

Past the Dalish clans, past the Imperial Highway, what if they kept going past all of it and didn’t look back? What was that life that Hawke spoke of, and where would they find it if they tried looking?

In this moment, he is tired of having to fight all his life, for all… truth be told, he doesn’t even know how many years old he is. What good is it to celebrate the birthdate of a boy who died long ago? Instead they’ve found more reason to celebrate the anniversaries of things that matter more, like his escape from slavery and his return to her side for good.  He said he would walk into the future with her, into whatever it contained, but… is this it?

Is this future that they have walked into, side by side and hand in hand, the same as the past he knowingly surrendered so many years ago?

The idea both excites and terrifies him, simultaneously living and re-living that which he’d refused to face for so many years. The knowledge would be a salt on his wound—helping it heal more quickly, but, _mercy_ , at what cost? The first time he’d felt the healing smolder and sting had been enough to drive him away, tail tucked and singed. Once burnt, twice shy. But now he’s learned how to find warmth in the heat, and with Hawke’s guidance through it all—

No, whatever guiding light she once cast has withdrawn, eclipsed by his own hand. Though the path that lies before them is dim, all the light they need is held between their palms. This path, their future, whatever it may carry, they will walk into together, side by side and hand in hand.

Hawke stirs, shifts, and opens a bleary eye to find him across the campfire. A ghost of a smile plays on her lips, and she moves her head lazily, a beckoning gesture, before nestling her chin in Da’len’s mess of black hair and dozing off again.

Apostate, Lady, Heir, Champion… Her titles do her little justice. But what can you call someone who has suffered impalements and eviscerations yet never flinches away from clutching the next blade at their chest? A sadist or a fool, he would have once said, but now the words _brave_ and _alive_ come to mind first, at least here.

Fenris stands up, and lays his bedroll next to theirs.

Let it bring him to ruin. Let it command him, blind him, bend his will. Let it take him in its hands and make of him what it will. He is afraid no longer.

It is a tyrant, a blindness, an agony, this flame.

And it is a flame, this consuming, brilliant, aching love.

 

That night, he dreams, and his dreams are mosaics. He dreams of memories long past, of moments long cherished, and of a future long awaited.

And somewhere in between, the lines begin to blur.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so, a few things to note: 1.) To those of you who familiar with the daily needs of taking care of a toddler, you'll likely find my presentation a bit... lacking in the realism. While I always strive avoid romanticizing or painting the process with sunshine and rainbows exclusively, I'll admit I did cherrypick the details I chose to include in order to provide with what I believe the story needs. So, apologies in advance there.  
> 2.) Yes, I'm aware the tense changed for the last part(s). I KNOW. There was just no getting around it, not without seriously marring that section. If I'd had that part written before I posted anything else, I would have changed the rest of the story to present tense, instead. But, this is fanfiction so shrug. If you're even reading this far, I think it's safe to say we all survived anyway.  
> 3.) I have A Lot planned for the last chapter so... Until then... :):):)

**Author's Note:**

> taking more prompt requests (that may or may not spiral) now at @blondepomwrites on tumblr.


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